Seriously folks, you just don't know how fucking good this is, and I'm only on the second track!! ENTER! THE REALM OF DEATH! A killer chorus, followed by some badass riffs, generally low in pitch and tremelopicked as is common in death metal. However, as I said, this is not a death metal band, so while there's the tremelopicking common for death metal, it's not being played in in a chaotic fashion like you see in most death metal. This is played in a slower moving, oppressive fashion, as is custom for doom metal. Similar to a bulldozer: not too fast, but you can't move out of it's path to avoid being maimed. I mean come on, there's even an Ozzy style laugh in the title track.

Onto Longing For Hades. Fuckin' A, this is just oppressing! This shit doesn't even need lyrics, just screams from the war pigs (her-her). But it does have lyrics, and of course they fit the doom/death oriented music quite well. How i never heard about these guys from many raving metalheads is beyond me. These guys should be HUGE in the underground. This is amongst the most underrated bands I can think of.

Dwellers Beyond Obscurity continues the assault, and even thrashes a bit! Some of the riffwork definitely reminds me of Carcass and Behemoth, besides the doom side of it. At 3.27, body parts go flying, in slow motion, one of them being your head, still attempting to headbang your neck into peices. Points off for the lame ending, it just doesn't work.

Abyss of Desolation, cool melodic intro, good harmonies, and now you bang. This is the ballad of the album, and it rocks and has killer melodies and blah blah blah.

Still think this has nothing to do with doom? Listen to Beyond (The Horizon's End) and say it again. I didn't think so. Hear the whispers? That's death approaching, but don't pay any attention, just headbang, you'll be dead before the arrival. This song's just over six minutes, and completely holds my attention in its entirety. Did i mention the tasteful use of synth? Silly me.

I don't want to waste any more precious time, the rest of the album kicks all the amount of ass that the first half does. And don't even think about missing the last track! The only bad things about this album are lack of solos (7 points) and the one bad ending (4 points). But these are trifles in the shadow of such excellence. Download it, buy it, just hear this one way or another.

Written by speedemon86 on February 28th, 2004